Spreading the Ashes

It will soon be three months after Matt's death.  In October we gathered the family together for a blessed memorial service on a hill near our home in Blue Mounds.  We called it "Restoration Point;" a geographical place and a spiritual beginning for our family.

Matt's seven-year-old daughter could not join us at the time and his ashes got delayed in Los Angeles.  When his ashes arrived at Blue Mounds we set a date to enable his two daughters to spread his ashes on the hill and around his memorial stone. 

We went up the hill the day before the big snowstorm on Saturday, December 11th.  There was snow on the ground and the temperature was in the 30s. 

After lighting a fire, we spread the ashes on the hill and around the memorial stone, said a comittal prayer for Matt from the Book of Common Prayer:

"In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our son, father, brother and friend Matthew, and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious to him, the Lord lift up his countenance upon him and give him peace. Amen."

Yes, Lord, bless him and give him peace.  Amen.

As for me, the deep, almost crippling, sadness has diminished.  I continue to going to counselling at the VA Center and continue to be in deep conversation with all my children and Sabine along with other close friends.  It is a combination of prayer and loving relationships that will pull me through all of these tragedies that I have experienced during these past three years.  The grief goes with the journey.